Start a bed and breakfast. If you live in a popular resort area or own a historic property, a B&B might be the perfect side hustle. Not only can you work at home with this career, but you’ll also score some tax write-offs in the process — although most innkeepers caution that the profession requires a lot of hard work and is more of an attractive lifestyle than a money-making pursuit.
Last but not least, you can also earn money online by building an online community, although the monetization strategies you can pursue will vary a lot depending on your goals. You can build a community with a blog, for example. You can also build an online forum and charge people for membership. You could even build up a Facebook group and use your influence there to sell and promote products.
My 10-year-old son brought home a book from our park’s free library box. It was a biology textbook – teachers edition. He said it looked interesting and hey, it was free (having no idea you could sell it). I scanned it in my Amazon seller app and realized it was worth around $150. He was so excited. We listed it for sale for $130 and it sold! Going to tell him, he just made $130!
It may take time to build that audience that turns views into dollars. The average revenue per 1,000 YouTube views is just over $6. But with enough videos for fans to scroll through, those views can add up over time. While you're building an audience, you could also join an affiliate program related to your channel and make money through affiliate links in your video descriptions.
Do you drive and own a car? There are several ways to make money from your car from taxiing people to renting your car to advertising businesses. You'll want to run the numbers before using your car to make money, especially if you're driving more than usual because it might cost more than you earn to use your car as a money-maker. You'll want to factor in depreciation, wear and tear, and gas expenses when you decide if driving is a cost effective way to make extra money.
Offering specific online SEO services is also another online freelancer role that businesses are crying out for. If you know how to improve a website’s SEO by doing keyword research, creating content that can rank in search engines, adding metadata / schema to posts and pages, and building backlinks to a domain, to name a few tasks, then this could be a great line of work for you.
Disclosure: This post is brought to you by the Insider Picks team. We aim to highlight products and services you might find interesting, and if you buy them, we get a small share of the revenue from the sale from our commerce partners. We frequently receive products free of charge from manufacturers to test. This does not drive our decision as to whether or not a product is featured or recommended. We operate independently from our advertising sales team. We welcome your feedback. Want to get in touch? Email us at [email protected]Sites like CookApp, Cookening, EatWith and MealSharing are to restaurants what Airbnb is to hotels. Sign up as a host to earn dough by cooking and serving a meal to guests in your home. It's up to you what you want to cook and how many people you can accommodate. Cooks are paid directly through the site, so no cash ever changes hands. Earning potential: $50-$100 per meal
The music industry might not be as strong as it was in the 80s, but there are still plenty of ways to make money online as a musician. Sites like SoundBetter let you sell your services as a songwriter, producer, or session musician to thousands of customers a month. While Musicbed, Music Vine, Marmoset, and SongFreedom are perfect for licensing your music to TV shows, movies, and web series.
Get a job as an umpire or referee. Do you love sports? Then read up on your favorite game’s rules and get paid to ref! For around $15 per hour-long game, you will get a little bit of extra cash for participating in your favorite sports. Make sure you are clear on the rules though, as you may have to deal with unhappy players if you make a bad call by accident.
Infographics are currently an extremely popular type of media. An infographic showing information or data in an interesting and fun way can help engage an audience and generate numerous likes and shares. As infographics take more time to create than just simply uploading an image, busy website owners are prepared to pay for custom infographics. And don’t worry, an infographic can be created using simple design software such a Canva. So extensive graphic design skills are not necessary, just a creative eye.
Build your audience on a course community: If you’re just getting started building an audience for yourself and want to leverage communities already actively looking for content you can choose to host and sell your online course on a site like Skillshare or Udemy. These are easy, cost-effective ways to build an audience and test your niche to see if there’s demand for it.
Again, if your blog has a large reader base, then businesses may be interested in paying you to review their services or products. Not only will you get a free trial using whatever these businesses are selling, you will also get a fee for writing them a review and posting it to your site. Paid reviews (and other paid and sponsored content) can be big money, so advertise this service on your contact page to generate business.
Ask for a raise. If you’re unhappy with your compensation at your 9-5 job, asking for a raise is one way to beef up your bank account. Most employers offer an annual review of your work – which could be the perfect time to negotiate a higher salary or ask for better perks. If your employer doesn’t offer such an opportunity, it might be time to initiate a review yourself.
In our local neighborhood, we've seen this service hired out to place signs in people's yards for announcements or funny pranks. Ha! If you're out and about on a Sunday you'll see plenty of people putting put signs for open houses. You'll probably have a great opportunity for this extra money idea if you can locate a neighborhood where lots of real estate agents or putting out there own signs. Wouldn't an agent rather be prepping the house for sale or doing marketing activities than placing a sign at a busy intersection? You bet and that's why outsourcing to you could work!
Haizel MacIntyre started her Avon business in June of 2008 to earn supplemental income to her full-time job when her husband was laid off. Since joining Avon, MacIntyre averages $1,800 a month in sales and her husband is helping her run the business. Her Avon earnings help pay the bills, provide extras for her three kids and she is hoping to earn enough to put towards her college tuition when she goes back to school to get her Masters in Social Work.

Get samples. When you first start out as a freelance writer, it can be hard to get work without any published samples. However, it is possible to get quality samples if you are willing to do some writing for free. First, you can publish content on your own blog or website. Also, you can write guest posts for someone else’s blog. Finally, you can write blog posts for free in exchange for a byline.[20]

If you want to clear some space out in your house and have a big stack of books you’ve been holding onto for too long, you can make money selling your books and textbooks online. Stores like Half Priced Books and others will give you cents on the dollar for each of your current books while you can check what your book is worth by simply entering the ISBN number on Book Scouter.

The music industry might not be as strong as it was in the 80s, but there are still plenty of ways to make money online as a musician. Sites like SoundBetter let you sell your services as a songwriter, producer, or session musician to thousands of customers a month. While Musicbed, Music Vine, Marmoset, and SongFreedom are perfect for licensing your music to TV shows, movies, and web series.
If you are a professional photographer, or have a real flair for photography, then selling your images on other sites could be an idea. This could be done alongside your own photography site, as it is a good way help get your work viewed by a wider audience. There are numerous stock image websites to contribute to, but choosing a popular high-end site like Shutterstock should ensure your photographs make you some money.

My friend, Ramit Sethi, New York Times Best Selling Author, has created a powerful “Idea Generator Tool” that debunks the myth that you need to start the next Facebook or Google in order to build multiple revenue streams. Ramit shows you how you can earn an extra $1,000 a month on the side with just a few hours a week and you can ramp up from there.

If you’ve got some free time and don’t live in the middle of nowhere, becoming a Lyft driver can be a very lucrative side hustle that allows you make money fast. And right now, they’ve got a promotion going on where any new driver will instantly get a $300 bonus after completing their 100th ride. If you start now and hustle hard on the weekends, you can probably unlock that bonus within a few weeks of driving (and that’s in addition to your normal earnings).